Jared Leto best supporting actor at Oscars (with video)

Suprise winners included 20 Feet From Stardom and Mr. Hublot

Jared Leto accepts the best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Dallas Buyers Club

Photograph by: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
, Postmedia News

Actor-musician Jared Leto has been absent from movie screens for more than six years while he toured with his rock band 30 Seconds To Mars, but he returned in style.

Leto won the best supporting acting award Sunday night for his portrayal of Rayon, the doomed transsexual in Dallas Buyers Club. In the first award presented during the 86th annual Academy Awards, Leto paid tribute to his mother — “Thank you for teaching me how to dream” — before paying further tribute to citizens of Ukraine and Venezuela, the 36 million people who have died of AIDS, and to his co-stars.

Leto’s award was expected, but there were still some twists to come. 20 Feet From Stardom, a documentary about backup rock singers, was named best documentary feature. It was a mild surprise — the harrowing The Act of Killing, about Indonesian hit squads, was favoured — but it gave a chance for singer Darlene Love to sing a rousing thank you speech: “I sing because I’m happy.”

Frozen, the Disney blockbuster musical about princesses and loosely based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, was named best animated film. It was expected to win, but in one of the early surprises, the French film Mr. Hublot was named best animated short, beating the 3D Get A Horse!, which was shown before Frozen.

Catherine Martin’s lavish outfits for The Great Gatsby won the award for best costumes, and Dallas Buyers Club took the makeup and hairstyling award, sparing the academy the embarrassment of handing out an Oscar to either The Lone Ranger or Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa, which were the competition.

The visionary sci-fi hit Gravity — which was nominated for 10 Oscars, tying it with American Hustle — won the award for best visual effects. It was expected to be just one of many technical awards that go to the film, which was made with an innovative mixture of live action and computer effects.

The ceremony included some of the tightest races in recent years, with Gravity and 12 Years a Slave grabbing many of the pre-Oscar awards. Several films are legitimate contenders in most categories and only one — Cate Blanchett’s expected inauguration as best actress in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine — is regarded as a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, one of the few surprises left in Hollywood is the toppling of foregone conclusions at Academy Award time: Remember the look of shock on Lauren Bacall’s face in 1997 when Juliette Binoche beat her out for the best supporting actress award. This year, Blanchett’s nomination could be clouded by the controversy over the renewed allegations, which he vigorously denies, that Allen once sexually abused his daughter Dylan.

If box office revenue is a measure of public interest in the Oscars, or at least in the films that are eligible for best picture, then this year doesn’t rouse much passion. The total take of the nine nominated movies was $784 million, according to Box Office Mojo. That sounds like a lot, but in the elevated world of movie budgets, it would pay the production cost of the Spider-Man trilogy with hardly enough left over for a couple of Alexander Payne films. Last year, the nominated movies brought in a cumulative $1 billion.

Four films this year — Gravity, The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle and Captain Phillips — have passed the $100 million mark and Gravity has hit $270 million. By way of contrast, Payne’s Nebraska has brought in $16.7 million.

For Canadians, whose rooting interest transcends such mundane matters, there were a few local favourites to cheer for. While it’s not officially a Canadian film, The Lady In No. 6: Music Saved My Life, — which won the Oscar for best documentary short — was made by a Montreal crew, including director Malcolm Clarke. The movie is about the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, who died last week at the age of 110.

Jean-Marc Vallée, the Québécois director of Dallas Buyers Club, was not in the running for best director — best actor nominee Matthew McConaughey and Leto are the public faces of the film — but Vallée was nominated for best editor under the pseudonym John Mac McMurphy, along with Martin Pensa of Montreal.

Other Canadian nominees were Toronto musician Owen Pallett, who performs as Final Fantasy, and Montreal-based William Butler, a member of Arcade Fire, who wrote the original score of the Spike Jonze fantasy Her.

Montreal-based Brit Chris Lawrence of the visual effects firm Framestore, who was the computer graphics supervisor on Gravity, shared the nomination for the film’s visual effects, and Toronto-born Andy Koyama shared in the best sound-mixing nomination for Lone Survivor.

No Canadian film made the short list for best foreign language film, but Canadian David Gerson is one of the three producers of the Palestinian film Omar.

In one of the night’s first disappointments, Toronto’s Rob Ford — star of the long-running comedy-drama Four Years a Mayor — announced that, contrary to early reports, he would not be attending the Oscar ceremony after all, although he does plan to appear on the TV talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The host was Ellen DeGeneres, who took over from Seth MacFarlane — an experiment who turned last year’s show into the world’s first black-tie frat party — and provided a much more gracious line of patter, with the possible exception of the moment when she called Liza Minnelli an excellent Liza Minnelli impersonator.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.